LEXINGTON, Ky.—What we learned Saturday evening as Midwest No. 1 seed Louisville occupied Rupp Arena and tore through No. 8-seeded Colorado State, 82-56, to advance the Cardinals to the NCAA Tournament Sweet 16 for the fourth time in the past half-dozen years:

Dieng is the best-kept secret

When Louisville went through its Senior Day ceremonies on March 9, coach Rick Pitino insisted junior center Gorgui Dieng be honored in the event he decided to turn professional at the close of the season.

On the face of it, that would seem an iffy prospect. ESPN draft analyst Chad Ford lists Dieng as only the No. 26 prospect on his top-100 draft-eligible prospects. DraftExpress.com has Dieng as the No. 27 prospect in its 2013 mock draft.

Um, what exactly are we—Pitino and those of us who were watching Dieng play against Colorado State—missing?

It’s clear he is not an elite scorer. He is not a fluid low-post scorer. That’s a given. But, seriously, what does he not do?

A 6-11, 23-year-old junior from Senegal, Dieng absolutely destroyed a fine college center, 6-11 Colton Iverson, whom his coach, Larry Eustachy, insists will play in the NBA. Iverson got only five shots off all day against Dieng’s defense. And it was his defense a lot of the time. The Cardinals used less zone defense Saturday than they do in many games, so Dieng was defending Iverson and making him irrelevant.

Dieng is a serious shot-blocker, although he had only one against the Rams. He now has 70 on the season, after getting 128 a year ago. It’s possible he’s still protecting the wrist he injured in November and going for fewer blocks with his left hand, but he’s defending as effectively as ever.

With 16:42 left in the game, Dieng sneaked into the front of Louisville’s press and jumped a passing lane for a steal. What player in the 7-foot neighborhood is doing that? At 15:07, he used his quickness to spin around Iverson to deflect an entry pass out of bounds.

Dieng was perfect offensively, 6-of-6 from the field. That included a cutting layup on the secondary break with 3:28 left and then the finishing blow of a foul-line jumper with 46.8 seconds remaining.

If Louisville does win the NCAA Tournament, it’s going to be with Dieng asserting a dominance that is there to be seen now if anyone chooses to notice.

Siva is Marching again

A year ago, after a late-February funk that seemed to swallow all that was good about his game, Louisville point guard Peyton Siva tore through the Big East Tournament and the early rounds of the NCAAs. He averaged 11.3 points, 6.0 assists and earned MVP honors at the Big East and all-tournament at the West Regional.

The funk came earlier this year. He was 1-of-9 in a late January loss to Syracuse, shut out in losing to Georgetown a week later. He was terrific for most of February and into the March portion of the regular season, including a 13-point, five-assist game in the regular-season finale against Notre Dame. So this time, his excellence in college basketball’s most essential month is less of a surprise.

His command of the Cardinals seems to be growing, however.

When Siva came off a high ball screen and curled to his right into the lane for a pull-up jumper less than four minutes into Saturday’s game, it was a declaration regarding who was in charge. This was to be his game. He would determine how it would operate, for at least as long as he was on the court.

He and the Cardinals were almost mean to the Rams, who came an awful long way to deal with the hostility of the crowd and the savage Louisville pressure.

Pitino generally uses a soft press against high-quality ballhandlers to avoid the sort of punishment VCU endured Saturday at the hands of Tim Hardaway Jr. and the Michigan Wolverines. The press in those circumstances is designed mostly to wear down opponents and to cut down on their available shot-clock time.

Against CSU, Pitino turned up the heat. The Rams turned over the ball 20 times. The Cardinals turned those extra opportunities into 24 points, but it really was more a matter of how little CSU could get done and how uncomfortably it functioned.

The Midwest will get Yummed

It will be a significantly different atmosphere at Lucas Oil Stadium next weekend than it was at Rupp Arena, which was turned almost entirely red for Saturday’s Round of 32 game. This was hardly a shock, but it would have seemed Butler would have more of a presence given that its campus in Indianapolis is only about three hours away and the Bulldogs played two compelling opponents here.

Louisville fans love their Cardinals, as anyone who has seen them cheer the baseball team or soccer team during a timeout break at the KFC Yum! Center can attest. This is a huge opportunity, a chance for their program to win its first NCAA championship in 27 years.

It’s been so long that Pervis Ellison now is in his mid-40s.

Louisville has made the Final four twice under Pitino, in 2005 and '12, but this is the first time they’ve had a serious championship challenger since the Cards overcame Duke in the ‘86 championship game. The fans want to be a part of that, and the team’s drive to the No. 1-overall seed is helping to make it possible.

They always were going to open the NCAA Tournament at Rupp. Given how the committee handled the two Michigan schools, that would have happened even if the Cardinals had been a No. 4 seed. Not that there ever was much chance of that.

But earning the overall No. 1 means they’d be assigned to the Midwest Region in Indianapolis. That’s a two-hour drive from Louisville, less for the many Cardinals fans who live on the Indiana side of the Ohio River. Even with Michigan State already part of the field and the possibility that Duke will join them in Indy, it’s easy to imagine Lucas Oil Stadium being filled with passionate Louisville fans hoping to celebrate.

Of course, that was the case in 2009, when Louisville went in as the No. 1 seed, Lucas Oil was a Cardinals madhouse—and the Spartans won, anyway.